This shot was taken at Orlando’s New Mexican Cafe in Taos, New Mexico during the week of my father’s funeral. A week with overwhelming amounts of work, stress, and emotion, we were struggling to find somewhere to eat and kept indecisively passing acceptable restaurants until we finally arrived here. A beautiful yet quaint restaurant on the north side of Taos, the food was fantastic and the decor colorful and eclectic.

I have spent several hours trying to identify this bird. I took this at the Denver Zoo in one of their aviaries and didn’t think to note any of the species I photographed. Oops … Update: It’s a Crested Wood Partridge.

I took this shot while on a road trip through Colorado and Northern New Mexico during the week of my father’s funeral. Tracy was driving while I took countless shots out of the passenger window. It was the first real opportunity that I had to do any photography that week. I’ve done only slight color adjustments to this photo. I rather enjoy the mix of colors and rust on this train against the spotty clouds and dull gray sky.

Tracy recently helped her Grandfather move out of his house in Anaheim and along the way came across a number of old cameras. I hesitate to use the word “antique” but by today’s standards, these are quite outdated. Among these cameras was an Ansco Rediflex twin lens reflex camera that was manufactured sometime in the mid to late 1950s. It shoots 620 film, a format that is no longer available except through special order. This film format is similar to 120 film so I actually modified the camera to accept that format instead and, viola!, here is one of the first shots to come out of this camera in several decades. You can see that the negative got scratched as the film was advanced but I kind of like the effect. Sadly, it is quite expensive to process the negatives ($15-$25 per roll). It looks like a darkroom is in my near future.

Duck! I shot this at the Denver Zoo in November and nearly hit someone in the face with my camera while panning. Oops! No injuries though. This is favorite shot from that outing! Also, good news, everyone! I now have a membership to the San Antonio Zoo. Guess I’ll have to start shopping for some larger lenses for those trips!

I just submitted this photo to the JPG Magazine site as a candidate for their “Shoot from the Hip” Theme. I spent an entire day in Milan, Italy shooting from the hip with a Canon Elph. This photo is my favorite. I had been walking all over Milan, aimless and without a map, and sat down in a square near a subway exit to watch the people coming and going. It was the Sunday before Fashion Week began and there were runway models everywhere. But here was the Girl in Green, neither a model nor a tourist, likely on her way home from work. The look on her face was better than any I could have conjured in a studio and especially since she was unaware that I was even taking the photograph. And although this shot could have been cropped or composed better, I don’t think I could have ever got that face again.

Welcome to Ironic Tonic!

Ironic: (i·ron·ic) containing or exemplifying irony; a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.